And have seen as we've been following
the Lord Jesus through his journeys in Galilee and Judea, especially
around Galilee. We've seen the fulfillment of
those promises that he made in Nazareth. The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. And because he has anointed me
to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim the
release of the captives. Just think of the captives that
he's released. The recovery of sight to the
blind. Not just physically blind, but
spiritually blind. to set free those who are oppressed. Just think of that woman, 12
years of oppression. Think of legion, think of that
leprous man, a man full of leprosy. the oppression is just beyond
our imagining really, and to proclaim the favourable year
of the Lord. So the Lord Jesus had gone about
in his time, after his first visit to Nazareth, he'd gone
about to prove the fact that when he speaks, he speaks with
the words of God, he speaks with the power of God, and he's come
with love and compassion to his people. He's come with healing
in his wings. And so in this section between
Mark 3 where the apostles are appointed and Mark 6 where they
are sent out, the Lord Jesus has brought them into many situations
to show them who he is, to show them what their ministry will
be, to show them, sadly, what the hardness of hearts are like,
to show them the miracle of faith. And sadly, in this story before
us, he also shows these people, his apostles, the terrible, terrible
wickedness of unbelief. But as in all of these situations
in Mark 6.1, it's the Lord Jesus who does the leading. He went
out from there and came into his hometown and his disciples
followed him. So the Lord Jesus leads always. his disciples. There's never
a moment of our lives where the Lord Jesus is not leading us.
But he also leads his disciples, as he has so many times, he leads
them into places of great danger, as he did in the storm, and to
places of great opposition. Just let's read down in Luke
chapter 4 on your sheets there. And he talks about the fulfillment
of the scriptures in verse 21, and then they see him for this
first time just through the eyes of the flesh. Then he talks about
God's electing purposes in sending him. that Elijah was sent only
to the widow of Zarephath. And there were many lepers in
the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed
but only Naaman the Syrian. And in verse 28 of chapter 4,
we have the extraordinary response. the sad response, but the real
response of the people of Nazareth. And the people in the synagogue
were filled with rage as they heard these things. And they
got up and drove him out of the city, led him to the brow of
the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw
him down the cliff." After all of what he had said, murder was
their intent. In verse 30 of chapter 4, we
have another remarkable evidence of the great sovereignty of the
Lord Jesus. There was a great crowd gathered
to throw him down the brow of a hill, but passing through their
midst, he went on his way. And so now, after this time,
and we don't know how long it was, but after some time had
elapsed and many miracles and great teaching, just extraordinary
things that the Lord Jesus had done, he now returns to Nazareth. He comes back to this place where
previously they had wanted to kill him because of who he said
he was and what he promised to do. And so, as extraordinary as it
is, in the intervening time, they had so much evidence before
them. They might have originally said,
well, this is just a man and he's claiming to be all of these
things. He's claiming to be the fulfillment
of Isaiah's prophecy, but he's just a man. He's just a carpenter. We know his mother Mary, we know
his brothers and sisters. But now, when he comes back this
second time, there's so much evidence, isn't it? He'd revealed
again and again who He is and His authority. Mark is continually
reminding us of the authority of the Lord Jesus, the Lordship
of the Lord Jesus. He's Lord over disease. He's
Lord over demons. He's Lord over the wind and the
waves. He's Lord over leprosy. And in
the previous miracle story, He shows Himself to be the Lord
over death. and all of those miracles. stood
as a testimony to the people of Nazareth because they were
all public miracles, they were public events and the news of
him spread everywhere and crowds followed him. So he comes back
to Nazareth and when the Sabbath came in verse 2, he began to
teach in the synagogue. The Lord Jesus never seems to
have missed an opportunity of meeting with God's people to
hear the Word of God proclaimed, and for him, going to the synagogue
was another opportunity to teach. And I think the Lord Jesus is
showing again and again that the meeting of God's people,
from a human point of view, might be very ordinary, but from God's
point of view, it's extraordinarily special. This is the place where
God has promised to come and meet with His people. This is
the very place and this is the very time where God has promised
by His Spirit to come and take His words, to take the proclamation
of His Gospel and apply it to your lives. I don't know what's
gone before you in the previous week. I know that in this world
we are promised that we'll have struggles, we'll have problems,
we'll have problems with our flesh, we'll have problems with
sin, we'll have problems with the world which is so enticing
to us. We'll have so many problems.
And you come here, I don't know what you've been through in this
previous week and you don't know what I've been through. But the
one thing we do have from God is a promise that when we come
here, He promises to meet with us. He promises to minister to
your souls. He promises to take His Word
and apply it to your lives. He promises that His Holy Spirit
will come and take the things that belong to the Lord Jesus
and He will reveal them to us. And so the Lord Jesus honors the fact that where God's
people meet, God is there to minister to them. So Matthew
18, 20 says, where two or three are gathered in my name, I am
there in the midst of them. So it's a great promise and a
great privilege. There's nothing more important
in life than meeting to worship God. nothing more important for
the health of our souls than to be meeting with God. And so
when the Holy Spirit comes in Acts 2, they continued steadfastly
in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of
bread and prayers, continuing daily with one accord, and they
ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. So the
Lord Jesus comes back to this place, this place of great privilege. Nazareth had had 30 years of
the Lord God living in their midst. Extraordinary. And he never despised the place
where he was raised. He was called Jesus of Nazareth. He endorses the fact that this
is his hometown and these are the people that he grew up with.
And so, as he speaks in the synagogue, in verse 2, and the many listeners
were astonished, saying, where did this man get these things,
and what is this wisdom given to him, and such miracles as
these performed by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the
son of Mary, the brother and brother of James and Joseph and
Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with
us? And they took offence at him. So here we have again the reaction
of these hometown hearers. They were astonished at the things
the Lord Jesus spoke, and they acknowledged that these things
had come from somewhere beyond human understanding. Where did
this man get these things from? And they acknowledged that it
was a gift, that this wisdom was given to him. And they also
acknowledged the fact that there are mighty works performed by
his hand. But then, They looked rather
than looking at the testimony of what he had done and what
he had said, because all of his acts, all of his miracle acts,
are always a testimony to what he taught and what he claimed
about himself. But their response is right,
isn't it? They look through fleshly eyes and they are right, aren't
they? He is the carpenter's son. The
Lord Jesus never denied the fact that he was a carpenter. In fact,
history says that he was a man who made yokes, which are the
pieces that go across the top of the oxen or sometimes for
the shoulders of men, yokes and plows. He was a carpenter and
he honors all manual labor. But he is the son of Mary, and
Mary may have been there in his midst. He is the brother. These
are his brothers that we see there, children of Mary and Joseph. And his sisters are here. They
were right about everything they said about him. So carnal eyes
can't deny physical realities. He had just performed the greatest
miracle, raising Jairus's daughter from the dead. And this news
would have spread like wildfire around that country. And the
carnal minds can discern wisdom. They knew that he spoke words
of wisdom. Carnal minds can discern that
great wisdom must come from another source, that it was given to
him. But carnal minds can never rise above the things that are
seen, the things that are touched, the things that are tasted, the
things that are taught by men, the things that are handled.
Still, the effect of our Saviour's preaching to the Jews, we find
amazement and astonishment. But sadly we find no faith. Men may be affected by the word
that they hear, but not converted by it. And they took offence
at him, it says. Why were they offended? Why were they offended? These
people were religious people, weren't they? The offense is
just the manifestation of the nature of all human hearts, aren't
they? That we are, as Simon showed
us earlier, in the fall of our father Adam, we have hearts that
are desperately wicked and beyond cure. And Jeremiah 17.9 says,
who can understand it? One of the biggest industries
in the world is the industry of trying to rationalize human
behavior. Psychology and counseling and
all these things are trying to understand human behavior. God says we can't understand
it. It cannot be rationalized. You think of the evidence that
lay before these people about who Jesus was. The claims, 2,000
pigs being hurled into the Sea of Galilee, just extraordinary
things happening. And so we have a heart problem,
all of us. have a heart problem. When we
think of these people in Nazareth, we need to know and remember
that without the grace of God, there go I. And so all of our
outward activities are just symptoms of a much deeper problem that
can't be touched by any external human influence. So man can reform
his life. They can stop drinking, they
can stop beating their wives, stop abusing their children.
Many extraordinary activities can be changed and remarkable
transformations in character can occur. But God warns that
anything that is not of faith is sin. So despite the outward
signs, if there hasn't been a new heart and a new nature given
by God, then all that has happened is that one set of sinful activities
has been transformed into another set of sins. and especially if
they are religious sins, they are more dangerous than the open
wickedness that was originally seen. The greatest sin of all
is the sin of pride and self-righteousness. and all that pride and self-righteousness
are is unbelief. Satan has blinded the minds of
unbelievers so they cannot see the glory of God in the face
of the Lord Jesus. And so in Mark 6, verse 4, the
Lord Jesus gives a promise and a warning. It's a great promise,
isn't it? A prophet is not without honour.
A prophet will never be without the honor of God. You think of
God's prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, men who were despised by this
world. Isaiah ended up being sawn into,
Jeremiah was beaten, abused, put in stocks. And they were
on their own so often, weren't they? You think of the crowds
in Jerusalem and just Jeremiah and a few faithful people. So
a prophet also will never be without honor of God's people. God will make sure that His people
are honoured in their right and proper time. They may not be
honoured by the people around them, but God will cause them
to be honoured because their message is always a message which
honours God, and God will honour those who honour Him. So true
prophets speak God's truth and they're only concerned about
the praise of God himself. They don't care about what men
say. As John the Baptist said, he must increase and I must decrease. And as Paul said, when I am weak,
then I am strong. And he's talking in 2 Corinthians
where he's being abused and criticized and his apostleship is called
into question as it was time and time again. But my grace,
says God, is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect
in weakness. So Paul says he'll boast all
the more about his infirmities, that the power of God might rest
on him. God's prophets will be honoured. They will be honored, except,
and it's extraordinary isn't it? John's gospel says that he
came unto his own and his own would not receive him. His family
didn't receive him. He wasn't honored amongst his
relatives. His own brothers in John 7, John 7, 5 did not believe
in him and taunted him about going up and exposing himself. And in Mark's gospel in chapter
3, 21, his own people heard about this and they went to lay hold
of him for they thought that he was out of his mind. And in
Mark 3, 32, His mother and His brothers came out seeking Him,
and they were seeking Him for good reason. They were fearful
that He had lost His mind. They were also fearful that the
same thing that had befallen John the Baptist might come upon
Him. They did it out of love and compassion,
but they were profoundly wrong. And so even in His own house,
a prophet will not be honored. And part of the problem is that
people are so familiar with people, aren't they? They're so familiar
with their human failings and frailties that they tend not
to look beyond what they can see with their flesh. And that's
exactly what happened there. And so in Mark 6, 5, the Lord
Jesus, having suffered this hostility again from Nazareth, a place
where there should have been great belief Mark 6 5 and he
could do no miracle there except he laid hands on a few sick people
and he healed them. Now we mustn't for a moment think
that the Lord Jesus can't perform acts, miraculous acts, saving
acts, unless there is something that human beings do. The Lord
Jesus in all of his miracles, in all of Mark's gospel, He continues
to encourage faith, to motivate faith, to honour faith, just
as he did with that woman who came and believed as she just
touched the edge of his garment. As the Lord Jesus said to Jairus,
just believe. Don't listen to what men say,
just believe. And so the Lord Jesus' power
is actually still regulated, in a sense, by his wisdom. And in that order, he did no miracles
there, because his miracles are a confirmation of his testimony
about himself and what he has come to do for his people. And so he does perform miracles
where there is no evidence of faith. So the Lord Jesus can
perform them, but here in a sense the fact that he does no miracles
is a sign of his judgment upon these people. He is not going
to in any way allow them to think that their unbelief is not without
serious effect. So Mark 6, 6 he says, He wondered
at their unbelief. The Lord Jesus seldom marvels
in the Scriptures, but His marveling in the Gospels is a marveling
about faith. When the Syro-Phoenician woman
comes, He marvels at her faith. He marveled at the faith of the
centurion who said, You don't have to come, you just speak
the word, Lord Jesus, and my servant will be healed. but he
also marvels at unbelief. Unbelief is a marvel. Unbelief defies logic. It defies experience. It shuts
people out from experiencing God's blessing. And so there
are six things in our notes that I'd like us to think about when
it comes to unbelief. It's a marvel to the Lord Jesus.
It ought to be a marvel to us. So unbelief ignores the obvious. Where did this man get these
things, and what is this wisdom given to him, and such miracles
performed by these hands? So those who heard the Lord Jesus'
teaching and saw his miracles did not reject him for lack of
evidence, they reject him in spite. of all the evidence. It's extraordinary. They didn't
reject him because they lacked the truth, but because they rejected
the truth. They despised the light because
they preferred the darkness. Extraordinary darkness of this
people. We must keep remembering that
this is a people who had seen and experienced God's amazing
activities for thousands of years. They were the people who knew
about Noah and the rescue of eight and millions and millions
dying. They are the people who knew
about the exodus from Egypt, and thousands, tens of thousands
of Egyptians dying, every family in Egypt suffering, and them
walking out, hardly able to carry all the bounty of Egypt, and
walking through the Red Sea as if on dry land. They are the
people, these people of Israel, who stood at Mount Sinai and
said to God, you tell us what to do and we'll do it." These
are the people who had then for the next 1500 years to this time,
prophet after prophet after prophet come to them and say, this is
who your God is, this is his character, this is what he's
going to do, you be faithful, you people be faithful to God. But unbelief characterized all
of Israel's history, except where God wonderfully by grace intervenes. And John summarizes in chapter
3 of his Gospel the nature of unbelief. He who believes in
him is not condemned, John 3.18. But he who does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation. that the light has come into
the world and men loved darkness rather than the light. And the
answer to the problem is they loved darkness rather than the
light because their deeds were evil. So when men and women willfully
reject Christ, at the heart of it, at the heart of unbelief,
is the evil of their hearts. And so the most powerful arguments
and the most convincing facts will not convince them of divine
truth. Nothing in Israel's history had
convinced Israel. And the Lord Jesus had shown
so many proofs by this stage of who He was. But unbelief ignores
the obvious. And unbelief always goes searching
for some refuge of lies. And it looks to the irrelevant
and the insignificant In the grand scheme of things, when
people are dying and the Lord Jesus is raising them from the
dead, when people are in fear on a lake in a storm and about
to drown, it doesn't matter whether Jesus is the son of Mary. It
doesn't matter who his brothers are. It might be true, but it's
irrelevant, isn't it? They were irrelevant to the issue
at hand. And it's sad and tragic to see
people exalting and running after small and insignificant things
and using them as great excuses for not believing the gospel.
I was talking to a fellow yesterday in the library and his reason
for not believing was that he couldn't believe that God would
turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. One day he will believe
that God, at that same time, sent fire and brimstone down
on those cities. And I pleaded with him, I said,
you have a soul. Why run after such trivial things? Why go and find that? To make
that as a refuge of lies. It's as inadequate and as silly
as Adam and Eve and their fig leaves. But we'll cover them,
we'll find a covering somewhere. And they'll run and they'll find
obscure texts of scripture. How many arguments you've had
about almost irrelevant arguments about some misunderstanding of
some Old Testament verse. personal peeves about Christians
or so-called Christians. The denial of the possibility
of the supernatural and yet we live in a world where people
are running after the supernatural all over the place. How many
people are reading tarot cards and astrology and following Hinduism
and Buddhism and all believing in some sort of supernatural?
And people find insignificant things in popular opinion. They'll point out religious nuts
around the place and they'll say, well, if this is what Christianity
is, then it must be crazy, without seriously seeking the Lord Jesus. And they'll run after their past
experiences. So unbelief chases the irrelevant,
and it diverts attention away from the gospel as a means of
escape, and it finds self-justification. They'll find some reason that
justifies where they stand at the moment. Unbelief keeps fervently
seeking a refuge of lies. and the refuse of lives that
these people had and the Pharisees had was the self-righteousness,
that they were right by their activities. Secondly, unbelief
stumbles over the truth. They had seen the truth, they
had witnessed the truth. and they turn away from what
is true. For since in the wisdom of God
the world and its wisdom did not come to know God, 1 Corinthians
says, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message
preached to save those who believe. for indeed the Jews ask for signs
and the Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified
to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness.
But to those who are thee called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God. So unbelief denies the
supernatural realities that we are people with souls. We are
people who live in a universe created by God. We live in a
universe sustained by God. We live in a universe that's
going to be burnt up by God. We live in a universe which is
just the foretaste, in a sense, of a glorious reality. Christianity
is based on the supernatural, which is why the Lord Jesus takes
His miracles to validate His teaching. An unbelief, sadly, can never
see the glory of God. As we've gone through Mark's
Gospel, we've seen this division that the Lord Jesus brought to
the people of Israel. To some, they saw the glory of
God. The woman saw the glory of God. The man with the legion of demons
saw the glory of God and proclaimed Him in the Decapolis. the woman
who was bleeding saw the glory of God. And in situation after
situation when we see Jesus do amazing things that no one else
has ever done, we have a crowd who rejoice and we have some
Pharisees who in the testimony of Scripture never once rejoice
over the Lord Jesus and they never see His glory. They just
look at everything through carnal eyes. It's very sad. It's a sad, sad testimony to
the nature of humanity. An unbelief... Oh, I've lost
my place. Sorry. I have... You're going to have
to fix this up, Cole. I've lost my pages. OK. As John Calvin says, our unbelief
is the only impediment which prevents God from satisfying
us largely and bountifully with all good things. Unbelief is
at the bottom, says Matthew Henry, of all our staggerings at God's
promises. So too often we walk upon God's
promises like children on ice, always fearful of breaking and
falling. Unbelief, it is alone that prevents
us with our hearts being taken to heaven and walking by faith
through those streets of gold. Walking by faith as we stand
around that throne and praise our God. Hebrews 11 describes
Abraham who was seeking a city whose builder and maker was God. So unbelief holds people in condemnation. Unbelief keeps people away from
the glories of God. And those who perish, and sadly
these people of Nazareth are a testimony to that, those who
perish will perish for one reason. They perish because they will
not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing else
in heaven or earth that prevents people from being saved but unbelief. So we need to beware of unbelief. God, through these words, is
warning us of the wickedness of unbelief, the irrationality
of unbelief. Unbelief made a coward out of
Abraham. Unbelief kept Moses out of the
Promised Land. Unbelief caused Aaron to fall
under pressure. Unbelief caused Peter to tremble. I wonder what blessings, privileges
and opportunities we have missed or I have missed because of unbelief. In Mark 9, we have the testimony
of someone who did believe, and it should be our testimony always,
isn't it? Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief. But also in this story, we know
from the wickedness of unbelief, we know the miracle of belief. There were believers in that
town of Nazareth. Mary and Jesus' brothers were
some, if possibly many. Belief is a miracle. Belief is
a gift from God. Belief is the thing that exalts
God the most and gives us the most comfort. And so many Christians
live their lives as if by faith they're walking across this really
deep and great ravine on a flimsy bridge of rotten ropes and decaying
boards and every step is filled with danger and the potential
of falling to disaster. Jesus Christ is not just a bridge,
but He has filled in the whole valley with reinforced concrete. Faith makes us to walk across
on solid ground, with immense walls on either side, so there
is no harm that can befall the righteous. And more than this,
the Lord Jesus carries us in His own almighty being. Lord Jesus honors faith and as
he goes through the rest of this gospel he will honor faith again
and again, he'll nurture it and grow it. And the Lord Jesus exhibits
his faith in God's purposes in his life and the lives of all
his people. In Mark 6, rather than stopping this unbelief causing
the Lord Jesus to stop Mark 6 and he was going around the villages
teaching. And it was a teaching that was
purposeful, he was teaching in a circuit. And the Lord Jesus
does not stop his work because he meets with unbelief and opposition. He doesn't argue with the people
of Nazareth, he doesn't plead with them, he doesn't beg them,
He simply proclaims who He is and continues His ordained journey. And we do now honour to the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus by wanting to argue about it all the time.
Our job is simply to tell the truth and move on. The Lord Jesus and his finished
work is not a matter of philosophical debate to be tossed around like
a medicine ball. These people of Nazareth had
plenty of evidence and multitudes of witnesses if they chose to
examine the facts, but they did not believe despite the evidence
before them. Our battle is not against flesh
and blood. It's a spiritual battle. We go to God and we plead with
Him to do things that human beings can never do. So God's purposes
will always continue. This gospel must be proclaimed
in all the world. And so faith causes us, and the
Lord Jesus wants us to lift our eyes above what these Nazarene
people did, to lift our eyes above what is happening around
us, to lift our eyes above what we feel in ourselves. to lift
our eyes above the heaviness of our heart, the weakness of
our faith, the seeming insignificance and inconsequence of our activities,
and look to God who is reigning and ruling. The heavens do rule. And no harm has ever come upon
me for not believing. I can't think of one situation
in my life where I suffered one little tiny thing from unbelief. I might have been hurt emotionally
and physically hurt. And Jesus was, when he left Nazareth,
he was a man of sorrows who was familiar with suffering. He wouldn't
have left Nazareth without his sorrows. But no long-term spiritual
harm comes to those who believe. Mark's written his gospel that
he might encourage belief. Mark, who abandoned Paul and
Barnabas and scurried back to his mum. Mark is a great testimony to
the grace of God, isn't it? Our faith might be weak and like
Abraham's Noah's and Daniel's, we'll all struggle at times.
And like them, they will want us to do one thing. They will
want us to go to the Word of God. They want us to trust the
living Word of God. And they want us to see faith
working in our lives and the lives of people around us. And
they will say to us, just go to the book and look at what
happened. Go to the book and see the Lord
Jesus in his glory. He's big enough to trust. He's
big enough to carry his people through all the trials of this
world. Amen. Let's pray.